Pain's Favorite Victim: Youby Kat Rose Agnew

Pain is a powerful emotion and like we have often heard, it demands attention. "That's the thing about pain, it demands to be felt."

I read somewhere how life is a series of pulls, back and forth. Up and down the roller-coaster we go. Everyone we know has faced some sort of inner demon or battle. We all come together uniting the fact we have all in some way or another experienced a pain that forcefully made us hit rock bottom. But how does one rise above this downfall?

I don't know about you, but I can't count how many times I have taken a seat and accepted the downfall and often used that same downfall as an excuse. I never really gave myself the opportunity to rise above the negativity life could bring forward. When it came to my own pain, I was a victim. Granted there were many things in my life that were nightmare worthy, but I never fought against it. I accepted it and let it wrap around my every thought and every action. It became my cemented excuse. Don't get me wrong, there are hardships in life where we ARE victims. In fact, I know this too well. But when we allow ourselves to never rise above the hardship, we begin traveling with the nightmare, even when our feet are carrying us to better places. Our pain blinds us.

There is no disqualifying the hurts of your past. The past, along with its inevitable issues, contribute no matter what to who you are. But many do not realize (myself included at one point) that we can go beyond the pain and create new and good lives despite. How does one do this? We must first take charge of ourselves and recognize what we are capable of doing. We must stop giving power to the blame and excuse game and feeding off of it. Assigning blame and making up excuses keeps us victimized, therefore we don't have to do anything different or encourage ourselves for change, because it's not about us; its about someone or something else. We are simply the recipient. Now what we need to understand is that we may in fact be the recipient of external forces, but we DO have control over our reactions and responses in what we do and how we handle these hardships life throws at us. Adopt the attitude, "Change must begin with me." If we don't, we may end up hurting others just because we have gone through something horrible and painful. We will justify treating the ones we love poorly, because of our baggage.

You are not the victim of your story or this life and neither am I. You are the creator. You are the soldier.

We must hold ourselves accountable for our actions, despite how badly life has wounded us over and over again. The most beautiful thing in the world is when someone hurts you and instead of passing down more hurt to another, they pass on the remarkable power of love. I was once asked what I thought this world needed, and to be completely honest... This world needs survivors. People who have survived mistakes and tragedies. People who have stood up time and time again after being beaten down. This is inspiration and it shows the true power of our being. The drive to keep on keeping on, despite how many times negativity has come crashing into your life with open arms. Those open arms with eventually strangle you.

Do not be fooled. From our hurt, we learn, and when others have the ability to watch someone who has been through so much, stand up again... it inspires. It inspires an entire movement, and that movement and my daily motto is: Do not become a victim to your pain.